Organic Oasis in Anchorage; Listening to Body and Pleasure in Tastes

I showed you some beautiful blue sky from the last few days: well, today, this was the view from our front door. Snowing, then sleeting, then raining, then snowing again. The wind roared us awake this morning: one of those times you really know you live 20ft from the edge of a bluff!

So, I want to tell a little story about how I finally got fed, and blissed out, in Anchorage, but first, what do you think this is?

It looks pretty obvious on here, but showing it on the camera view, we got guesses like 'fried eggs!'

Here it is...

...it's a seal skull that Phil was holding in front of the light bulb. Amazing animals! Those bones are so translucent, so thin! Enables them to dive down. Also, enormous, vast earsockets (you'd never guess from their little nubby exteriors) to cope with the pressure changes.

We'd been on the road for three weeks by the time we got to Anchorage, and were then roaming around for several days. I was so ready to be at home, and part of it is just finding it easier to feed myself at home than anywhere else. I'm learning how to become more flexible (and one wonderful friend we stay with sometimes always loves to collaborate on decadent salads, so it's not always difficult at all). But I'm also letting go of the impression that there's no 'healthy food' scene in Anchorage. The natural food store there is awesome if sticker-shocking. And one lateish lunch, after a long morning tied up in an appointment, we went to Organic Oasis for lunch. It's a big, open space that often hosts live music. Several people mentioned that it's cold in there, which worried me a little, but it turned out that we weren't cold this time.

I immediately felt 'at home' there, with the flats of wheatgrass hanging out, coconut waters, kombuchas and many other goodies in coolers...

I'd expected that I'd get a salad only, but I stuck on the smoothies page and ended up overcoming my restrictive feelings and getting one! All their smoothie options contain spirulina, flax oil and lecithin, and then three or so other ingredients. I got the 'peanut butter conspiracy,' whose three others were peanut butter, banana and apple juice.

'Twas a huge stretch for me - bananas and apple juice? Waaay too much sugar, right? And peanut butter? Waaay too many omega 6's (though the flax would help to balance that out). I got a small appetizer salad too, with avocado and a shiitake mushroom dressing, and shrimps which I gave to Phil.

Phil enjoyed the shrimp on his chicken gumbo. I appreciated that this place serves healthy meat options, as it means that my companion was able to get a satisfying meal too.
The salad was very good, but the smoothie was just so yummy and ecstatically delicious and thick and good! I really should have just had the smoothie: I was the fullest I've been in many months after that. And the funny thing: not only did I love the smoothie, I was blissed out for hours afterwards: not in a hyper or comatose way, I was quite functional. Just felt so happy and peaceful and loving and grateful.

I talked to my naturopath about it, half-expecting a scolding for having eaten those offending items. He actually congratulated me on doing so and encouraged me to do something like that on a regular basis! I'm still chelating, so whereas I'd thought I should still avoid all sugar until time comes to deal with the yeastie beasties, he says that I shouldn't deprive myself of the goodness those foods provide when we're not confronting the yeast yet. More importantly, he encouraged me to apply some of the delight I take in creating food for others to the food that I get to eat myself, and not to be so rule-bound with every single bite. I hadn't even thought about how my lack of appetite and general grossed-outness with food lately could be related to the whole austerity thing. I seem periodically to lose track of the fact that some pleasure can be nourishing.

So! Today I made a banana-spirulina-peanut butter smoothie for lunch! I used flax seeds, lecithin and some stevia - no apple juice. And oh, it was good. I was definitely happy again this afternoon, and so was my tummy.

I hope this (relatively) little moose also had a happy tummy. It's chowing down on a hubbard squash our friends had left outside their house as decoration. This is when it was still 10 degrees, so the thing was frozen hard: it was impressive that he could get anything off of it at all, thunk thunk thunk. I could have reached out and touched him when I came to take the picture: he was far too busy to be bothered by me...

What comes around and eats your decorations?